


The One To Remember What Day

by m_class



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: (shocking I know), Angst, April Fools' Day, Bestest Space Friends conspiracy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Janeway and Tuvok ride again, Kindhearted April Fools' pranks, Repeat: This fic is a good-prank only zone!, That is NOT where the angst comes from, There are NO mean pranks in this fic!, Who wants to read about that?, guess-who putting too much pressure on herself again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 18:00:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6480988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_class/pseuds/m_class
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Captain. If I understand correctly, you wish for me to assist you in 'pranking' the senior staff?"</p><p>April Fools' Day shenanigans with a hurt/comfort twist. Set in Season 5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One To Remember What Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lauawill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lauawill/gifts).



> This is a thank-you present for joyful-voyager, who so generously took the time to praise and encourage me after my first-ever tentative drabble, compliment my first real fic far more lavishly than it deserved, and urge me to keep writing! (Enabler.) I’m so grateful for your encouragement, and when I saw you asking the universe for someone to collaborate with you on and/or write a Voyager April Fools’ fic, I couldn’t resist!
> 
> (Side note/acknowledgement: If a certain prank herein seems vaguely familiar, it was indeed inspired by a recent intestinal Tumblr post - see endnote.)

"Captain. If I understand correctly, you wish for me to assist you in 'pranking' the senior staff?"

Janeway gazes back at him across the little round table, serene, unreadable. Rather than respond to the affirmative or negative, she returns, "You're on beta shift, Tuvok. Were you in the messhall to witness Neelix’s spontaneous little prank on Lieutenant Ayala the other morning?”

“I was indeed there to observe Mr. Neelix dramatically present Mr. Ayala with a covered dish of “leola root stew with leola root garnish” that was instead revealed to be a fairly accurate and entirely leola-free facsimile of Mr. Ayala’s favorite succotash from home.”

"And did you notice anything about his performance on shift, before and after?"

"Lieutenant Ayala's mood appears to have been uplifted by the event, even several days after the fact. This has had a positive impact on his timeliness and attentiveness. I believe that were Seven of Nine to inspect his performance, she would find a measurable increase in the lieutenant's efficiency."

Janeway looks meaningfully at him over her drink, eyes glinting in the warm light of Sandrine’s.

"You believe that participating in April Fools’ Day festivities will lift the crew's spirits, much like Mr. Neelix's...more successful...morale-boosting efforts. And that it is thus a warranted expenditure of our time and resources as senior officers on this ship and—as you once said in regards to your own multifaceted role—leaders of a community."

"It's only logical," she responds, straight-faced.

"Am I to assume you have a plan?"

"You assume correctly." She flashes a wicked smirk. "One which you will be instrumental in helping me to implement."

"In that case, I look forward to assisting you in this endeavor.”

“I thought you might.” She grins at him, the ghost of a young officer he once knew eyeing him mischievously from behind his captain’s eyes.

“Will we be performing one prank on the entire staff, or individualizing our efforts?”

Janeway takes a sip of her drink, drumming her fingers on the upside-down PADD on the table in front of her. “Well, I think we might want to leave the Doctor out of this. He’s only been back on duty three days, and I think he’s still recovering his equilibrium. And he’s still mourning Ensign Jetal. We’ve had time to grieve and move on, but for him, in some ways she only died a week ago.”

Tuvok nods in agreement. “And Seven of Nine?”

“I’m…easing her into this experience in humanity. Her prank rides the coattails of B’Elanna’s. Actually, they’re all one big prank, really, but it’s iterative. And it encompasses a few more people than just the senior staff. I tried to pick the crew who...needed it. Here, come on, let me show you what I’ve got laid out—”

Before she can pick up the PADD, he reaches a hand across the table, laying it flat just next to her fingertips. She freezes, glancing up at him.

"Are you sure _you_ have," he asks, looking at her carefully, "the time and energy to spare on coordinating such festivities?"

Her gaze drops to the table at his words. "That's the point,” she says in a low voice. “I need to _make_ the time. Just because I'm Captain doesn't justify forgetting birthdays and not even knowing the Earth date half the time. For the first time in almost a year, I’ve remembered a holiday in advance, Tuvok.” Her gaze is beseeching, an overflowing tangle of all-too-human, all-too-Kathryn-Janeway emotions. “It’s a chance for me to do something for them, something…good. I owe them that. I owe them more than that.”

His query having had the exact opposite effect to what he had intended, he considers arguing her last point, but elects instead to drop the subject. When his friend first summoned him to Tom Paris’s old holoprogram and sat down with him to scheme, there was a carefree excitement in her voice that he hasn’t heard in years. Even if that excitement is blended with questionable emotional motives, it is promising that the celebration of this most illogical of human holidays can conjure it in her at all.

“Should I be concerned,” he asks instead, “that you plan to, as the human expression goes, ‘stab me in the back’ with a ‘prank’ of your own, if you are indeed so intent upon spreading this atypical variety of holiday cheer to each eligible member of your senior staff?”

The diversion works, and he is letting out a small, resigned sigh before she even opens her mouth to respond. “Ah. I surmise, from the growing expression of satisfaction you are currently attempting to conceal, that you believe being asked to collaborate with you on this ‘prank’ will in and of itself be a fulfilling experience for me.”

“I'm not smiling, Tuvok.”

“You are deliberately not smiling,” he agrees. “The human emotion of happiness is visible only in your eyes.”

***

Janeway sinks into her desk chair and allow herself to prove Tuvok right _in absentia_ with a self-satisfied smirk. With his assistance gained, it’s full steam ahead. If a holiday as daffy as April Fools’ Day can’t bring a smile to the faces of the crewmembers who most need it after these last, painful few months, what will?

She takes a sip her newly-replicated coffee, frowning at the PADD in front of her. Aside from her growing excitement over what she hopes will truly be a morale-booster—and an entertaining one to put into effect, at that—she’s looking forward to proving to herself that yes, she is in fact capable of mustering up _the time and energy_ for this. For once, she is going to be the one to remember a holiday. For once, she will be the person to something nice for h—for them. Something to go some small ways toward repaying everything he— _they_ have done for her.

 _Happy birthday._ The words were a punch to the gut as Harry hollered them across the bridge to Chakotay at the beginning of alpha shift just over two months ago. She’d stared at the viewscreen, rearranging her stricken expression into a smile before turning to wish him the same. _Happy Chakotay’s birthday to you, Kathryn Janeway, you selfish, thoughtless idiot._ After all he’d done for her other the years… She hadn’t helped plan the party; hadn’t even known it was coming, Tom’s PADD with the details buried under a score of others on her desk.

"I'm sorry," she'd said to him, later, after the decorations were cleared away and they were walking together to their respective quarters. "I need to wake up and start paying attention to these things. You've never forgotten my birthday or anyone else's. I can't always expect you to be the one to remember what day it is."

He'd told her it was okay. A slight grin, adding kindly, "That's not your job."

But that's not true, and she knows it. Knowing what day it is, and when that day is a significant one, isn't supposed to be a _job;_  it's pretty much a basic requirement of being a person.

In spite of that fact, it’s a pretty basic requirement she’s lately felt pretty unable to fulfill.

The last few months: crisis after crisis, an unending nightmare that makes even their tumultuous first few years stranded in this quadrant look like a happy daydream of peaceful exploration. How is she supposed to remember to keep a little calendar of birthdays and holidays when she can barely remember a time before parasites and demotions, Delta Flyer crashes and Borg multiple personalities, deadly holoprograms and space without stars?

It feels like every day brings a new threat to someone she cares about. It feels this way because it more or less is this way. So maybe it's excusable not to remember holidays, or anything about a given day more sentimental than its stardate. Still, being the one to remember the Earth date, for once, feels good, like waking up. 

***

“Tuvok to Chakotay.”

Chakotay taps his combadge as the doors of his quarters swish open. “Chakotay here.” He turns left and heads down the hall, wondering what crisis couldn’t wait for him to arrive for his bridge shift in two minutes.

“Please report to Holodeck Two. Several crewmembers have become inconvenienced by a technological malfunction requiring your immediate attention.”

“On my way. What’s the situation?”

“No crewmembers are at risk of harm,” the calm Vulcan voice continues as Chakotay turns on his heel and heads for the turbolifts. “However, the situation is somewhat delicate, and I thought it best to summon you to address the potential personnel ramifications.”

“Acknowledged. Explain.”

“The Emergency Medical Hologram took it upon himself to give Seven of Nine, who had expressed a passing interest in Alpha Quadrant lifeforms, a walk-through lesson in the internal biology of the common targ. Lieutenant Torres accompanied them to perform a routine diagnostic of the Doctor’s performance while using his mobile emitter.”

“And?”

“Unfortunately, while they were inside the targ’s anatomy, a technical malfunction occurred that resulted in the crewmembers being trapped in—inside the targ’s anatomy.”

Chakotay comes to a full halt in the corridor and takes a deep breath. “ _Where_ inside the targ’s anatomy?” he asks slowly.

There is a slight pause. Then, with no audible embarrassment in his ever-Vulcan tone, Tuvok responds, “The crewmembers are currently within the simulated targ’s reproductive system.”

“Oh, god.”

“As the engineering staff works to free them, the Emergency Medical Hologram has been attempting to explain to Seven of Nine the potential connections between reproduction, sexuality and romance, while Lieutenant Torres, believing the doctor is to blame for their predicament, has become emotionally distressed and continues, at increasing volume, to threaten bodily harm to her fellow crewmembers. Several members of the security team are present and ready to act if necessary once the doors are opened, but we hoped that you might be able to diffuse the situation over the comm.”

“Oh, _god._ ”

Chakotay jumps out of the turbolift as the doors open. If it was Tom Paris’s voice on the other end of the comm—hell, if it were _any one_ of the one hundred and forty-four souls on Voyager _other_ than Tuvok—he would almost suspect that this was all some bizarre prank. But it _is_ Tuvok, and that means that Torres, the Doctor, and Seven of Nine are about to tear each other to shreds inside a holographic targ ovary.

Or possibly testicle.

 _Oh, god_.

Taking a deep breath, he rounds the corner, expecting to see a gaggle of engineers and security. Instead, the hallway is empty. Have Tuvok and his team been able to find a way into the targ reproductive program?

Cautiously, he walks to the doors, which slide open to him without issue.

“APRIL FOOLS!”

The combined shouts of over a dozen crewmembers assail his senses along with a blast of warm light. Blinking, he stares, wondering for a moment whether the ship has hit some kind of temporal anomaly causing Kes’s second birthday party to open back up to him. But this isn’t Sandrine’s, just a generic ballroom full of shining candles and tables piled with appetizers, and instead of Kes staring happily around at the crew, it’s Naomi Wildman who gallops up to him, shrieking, “Were you fooled?! WERE YOU FOOLED?!”

Kathryn steps towards him, a broad grin on her face. “Welcome to the party.”

“Tuvok,” is all he manage. “ _Tuvok_?”

“Commander.” Tuvok steps toward him. “I am pleased that you were ‘taken in’ by my efforts at descriptive authenticity.”

“ _Tuvok_.”

“We thought,” says Kathryn, smiling innocently, “that a few pranks might be…good for morale.”

“The Captain asked me,” Tuvok says expressionlessly, “to assist her.”

Chakotay shakes his head, biting back an enormous grin. “Well played.”

“If you think _yours_ was bad,” says B’Elanna, elbowing her way through the crowd, “you should have heard _mine_. Tom and Harry had me convinced to grab Seven and Vorrik as backup and scramble down here with a pile of portable forcefield generators because the holodeck was flooded with a native Delta Quadrant strain of tribbles!”

“An iterative prank,” Seven chimes in approvingly.

“Exactly,” explains Kathryn, looking more than a little proud. “The more people we lured here, the more voices to act out the rest of our little dramas. We saved Tuvok for the hardest sells, of course. And the best hard sell for last.” She smirks at him.

Chakotay laughs aloud, realizing slowly, as he glances around the room, that this collection of crewmembers is anything but random. Minus the Doctor, still in the acute stages of his own recovery, Tuvok and the Captain have drawn together (or, more precisely, pranked together) the crewmembers who have gone through the worst ordeals over the last half a year, from Tom the recently-demoted to Sam Wildman, entirely recovered from her injuries aboard the Flyer and currently being pulled towards Chakotay by her daughter.

“Mommy and I got to help with Harry’s!” Naomi explains gleefully. “It was the _best_ one!”

Harry grins. "I think I'm the winner,” he agrees. “Ensign Wildman was lured down first, and they got her to comm me and say she’d seen my clarinet hopping its way in here and was concerned that a recent spacial anomaly had caused it to become ambulatory and sentient.”

"The creative force behind _that_ part of the plan," Kathryn says with a mischievous smile, pausing to draw out the anticipation, "was _alll_ Tuvok."

The semicircle roars with laughter before breaking up to join the dozen-and-a-half crew treating themselves to punch and cheerful conversation, courtesy their captain and her Vulcan partner in crime. Chakotay smiles as he reaches for a drink and a plate of crackers, chuckling to himself as he muses upon the horrific targ scenario so vividly described by Tuvok and imagines Captain Kathryn Janeway sitting down at her desk to pen that particular prank.

But as his eyes idly track his captain, wandering through the party and looking approvingly over the happy crowd, a worm of worry twists in his stomach. He doesn’t know what it is. This should be a relief, his shoulders relaxing instead of tensing to see Tom, B’Elanna, Samantha, Naomi, and, not least, Kathryn laughing and celebrating after months of emotionally draining crises. But something about the situation niggles.

Tuvok has slipped to the periphery of the party, standing near Chakotay as he looks over the crowd with his inscrutable Vulcan gaze. Chakotay downs his fruit punch before turning to the security chief.

“This was a good idea. Your participation certainly sealed the deal on the believability factor.”

“Thank you.” Tuvok inclines his head. “I am glad you are pleased with the results.”

“The Captain seems happy,” he says, carefully.

“Indeed,” Tuvok responds. “In many ways, I believe conceptualizing and successfully implementing this endeavor has been a positive and helpful experience for her."

 _In many ways._ The tentative smile falling off his face, Chakotay turns to look at Tuvok.

"What do you mean?" he asks simply. Tuvok will know which part of his comment Chakotay is asking about; the ‘in many ways’ was obvious bait, to be picked up on or discarded as the first officer chose. _Let it never be said that Vulcans can’t be indirect when it suits their needs._

"She mentioned that she wished," Tuvok says, after a span of eons, "to be the one who remembered what day it was."

“Oh.” Then, thinking of the last few months, a certain conversation after a certain birthday. “ _Oh_.”

“Indeed.”

“I need to talk to her.” He sighs, shaking his head.

“This might be a good opportunity for such a conversation,” says Tuvok quietly. “As we have secured replacements for all parties currently present, and she has declared an intent to remain here for the duration of the festivities, there are no other tasks to pull her away from your discussion.”

 _Or that she can pretend are pulling her away._ He nods absently, scanning the crowd. Tuvok’s right; it is a good time, if only he can discreetly edge her away from the party. Tom is holding court by the punchbowl, while Neelix’s impression of the supposed sentient clarinet is making Naomi and Harry alike howl with laughter. But he can’t hear Kathryn’s throaty chuckle.

He makes his own way through the crowd, smiling and nodding absently at his friends as he searches for a flash of red hair.

Nothing.

“Computer, locate Captain Janeway,” he mutters to his combadge under the noise.

“Captain Janeway is in her ready room.”

Of course she is.

***

"Are you all right? What's wrong?"

Janeway drops PADD she's been holding, only the first in a long backlog of reports, and is halfway out of her chair before her first officer waves her down, forcing a smile as he crosses the room to her. She gets up anyway, walking around the desk to face him and lay a hand on his shoulder.

"What's wrong?" she asks again, trying to sound gentler this time even as her thoughts race. _Is it the Doctor? B'Elanna?_

"Nothing. Nothing is wrong." He smiles at her, a more natural smile this time. "I'm sorry I scared you. I just wanted to talk."

"Well, I think we can arrange that.”

“Tuvok said something to me about…” He sighs, his eyes stormy but hesitant, and she can see as plain as day the moment when he decides to go for broke. She tenses. “He said you planned all that—all that, that really _wonderful_ party—because you wanted to show you could be ‘the one to remember what day it is.’ Kathryn, is this yet another responsibility you’ve taken onto yourself as Captain? Are you trying to prove to us that you can keep us safe _and_ ensure our happiness? That _you_ can be happy at the drop of the hat if the need arises? Because no one is asking that of you. We don’t need that.”

Janeway meets his gaze. “This is not a responsibility I’ve ‘taken onto myself as Captain,’” she informs him flatly. “It is a responsibility that I _have_ as a _person_. What kind of—of thoughtless person forgets their own friends' birthdays? I need to be more than that. I need to do better.”

"You ensure our survival," he says softly. "You protect us all. And more often than I can sometimes _believe_ , you muster up more for us. Parties and speeches and a confident smile…Look, I won’t pretend the crew doesn’t need you to wear that smile sometimes. That’s just the hand we’ve been dealt. But for us, your senior staff, your _friends_ …you don’t have to be everything. That’s not your job. Your job is to guide this ship and to keep us alive and you do. You do. You don’t have to do more.”

She stares at him for a moment, then smiles sadly, eyes dropping to the ground.

“Thank you for saying that."

“I _mean_ that.”

“It’s a…I appreciate it.”

They stand in silence for a moment. Then she lets out a rough chuckle. "I tried to do something for you for once, and here you are giving me a gift yet again."

The brush of his fingers against her jawline is as light as the flap of a moth's wing, the barest hint of pressure tilting her face up to meet his eyes.

She can count the times he has reached out for her, rather than the other way around, on one hand. Not to mention that most of her touches are casual, laden with scant meaning. This is anything but, and for a second guilt and confusion are forgotten in the flash of shock as her eyes meet his.

"That," he says, quietly, "is exactly what I'm talking about. 'For once?' Kathryn, you keep me and a hundred and forty-two other souls alive day in and day out. You don't owe us your...you don't have to somehow..." He glances out the viewport, then back again. "You don't have to pretend that...what you do...is easy. You don't have to hide the...Look, Kathryn, you keep us alive. You don't have to be the one to remember what day it is. You have us for that. You have me for that.”

She stares into his eyes for a minute, taking a long, slow breath. Opens her mouth and closes it; looks down and back up again. In the silence of the ready room, she can hear the faint hum of the warp core.

“April Fools?” she whispers finally, dredging up a lopsided smile.

He laughs, breaking the solemn hush. “Not April Fools.” His smile is sunlight. “Never April Fools.” Serious again. “You have us. Always.”

And now she has to hold her breath for a moment, and look down. After a moment he says gently, “I’ll be on the bridge if you need me,” and the doors are swishing shut behind him.

***

In a minute, she’ll straighten her hair and to go out to the bridge. For now, Janeway sits on the settee to nurse a freshly replicated coffee, not thinking of anything much, just staring out at the stars.

 _You do,_ he said.

_Your job is to guide this ship and to keep us alive and you do._

She smiles sadly into her coffee. _Oh, Chakotay. I wish I could give you more. Don’t you deserve more? All of you?_

She closes her eyes for a moment, and an unexpected rush of exhaustion has the coffee wobbling in her hand. How long has it been since she’s had a decent night’s sleep? A week? Two? Sometimes it feels like she hasn’t slept well since the days of their first parties on that holodeck, back when it seemed, almost, that they might build a life on this ship, before the constant savagery of this quadrant was laid bare in all its painful glory, cutting away such shortsighted dreams and hammering home what she’d done to all of them, stranding them here.

And yet.

Here they still are.

She has captained this ship through hell and back, more times now than she can count, and _here they still are_.

It’s her job, yes. But this little life-long assignment is outside the scope of any captain’s job in the history of Starfleet. And she has still done it. And she is continuing to do it, to take care of this ship and this crew, even if there isn’t always a smile on her lips, even if she’s exhausted and imperfect and can’t always be counted on to remember the Earth date.

_You don't have to be the one to remember what day it is. You have us for that. You have me for that._

Slowly sipping her coffee, she relaxes back onto the couch for the first time in weeks. The universe even lets her have that, for a few minutes, before the lights suddenly go down, Chakotay’s announcement ringing through the room: “Red alert. All hands, brace for impact!” A moment later, on her combadge: “Captain to the bridge.”

Janeway stays on the couch for the promised impact, not a severe one, coffee dregs slopping onto her hand. Then she pushes her hair behind her ears and strides out to take her place on the bridge. This is what she can do; this is what she will do. She is the competent captain of Voyager, protecting her people to the degree that any one human can, and that is and has been and will be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> The targ reproductive system prank was inspired by a Tumblr post about getting stuck in a holoprogram of the intestines/digestive system. I couldn't find it after an uncomfortable amount of Google searches along the lines of "tumblr holoprogram voyager digestive tract," so if anyone knows the post whereof I speak, please let me know so that I may give credit where credit is due! :)


End file.
